Universal immortality is equivalent to an increase of children-per-woman of 2, which is not insurmountable provided that a demographic shift occurs at the same time. The main problem with the demographic shift, an aging population, in conveniently avoided by immortality.

However, if a demographic shift does not occur, then you basically have the problem of colonial India, which experienced a sudden drop in child mortality thanks to the British Empire but not a corresponding change in the culture. Hence, massive reduction in per-capital wealth. (Ironically, often blamed on the Empire. Lesson is, don't help poor peoples or you'll make things worse in the long run.)

My guess is that is ain't gonna happen.. or we need to pass laws now that state that anybody that is biologically immortal or receiving medical treatment that renders them biologically immortal have the bejezzus taxed out of them, not an income tax but an asset tax. Lets say 5% of total assets per year.

I like how the author of TFA handwaves issues like food and energy production and population control, says he'll answer the questions on how we'll do it, and then goes on to handwave them again with "We'll have better tech that will solve those issues. Hell we'll just Terraform Mars and Venus!"

I'm not so sure our favorite retard will like this guy. He points to 3D printing and space colonization as part of the solutions to the problems that will arise from stopping aging.

lifeboat:Not only should we colonize as much of the universe as possible, we should simultaneously increase our life-spans to near immortality.

/ There, that oughta do it.

Exactly. Immortality on this planet alone would destroy whatever semblance of balance we have left. But immortality with multiple worlds to colonize wouldn't be an issue at all. And hell, maybe fixing the aging problem would finally be the kick in the pants we would need to stop dragging our feet and get our asses to space.

Not my idea but a decent one: Require that women of childbearing age who want to be on welfare have an IUD inserted. Go off welfare, get it removed ( if they want). Want a lifetime of even more freebies? Opt for sterilization. This plus education and oddly enough- soap operas in poor, rural areas with high birthrates (again, not my idea- women see that the stars on the soap operas don't have 19 kids and they try to emulate them) will help bring about sustainability..

One of the things I've always found amusing / depressing about discussions of climate change is the "but... but... China!" argument.

It's true. China did recently catch up with the US as far as carbon production.

Mind you, they have four times the population. So basically you have one obese guy at the buffet saying "What are you looking at me for? Those four skinny chinese at the next table over had just as much as I did!"

bumblebutt:Not my idea but a decent one: Require that women of childbearing age who want to be on welfare have an IUD inserted. Go off welfare, get it removed ( if they want). Want a lifetime of even more freebies? Opt for sterilization. This plus education and oddly enough- soap operas in poor, rural areas with high birthrates (again, not my idea- women see that the stars on the soap operas don't have 19 kids and they try to emulate them) will help bring about sustainability..

You want to drop the birthrate real real fast? make paternity tesitng mandatory, and when a child is weaned the father must take primary responsibility in caring for it for two years. And no dropping the sprog off at daycare, that just shows you don't love your kid or want to raise it properly.

Men will wrap their package so often they'll forget what unprotected sex feels like.

bumblebutt:Not my idea but a decent one: Require that women of childbearing age who want to be on welfare have an IUD inserted. Go off welfare, get it removed ( if they want). Want a lifetime of even more freebies? Opt for sterilization. This plus education and oddly enough- soap operas in poor, rural areas with high birthrates (again, not my idea- women see that the stars on the soap operas don't have 19 kids and they try to emulate them) will help bring about sustainability..

Democrats wouldn't go for it because that means less poor people being born, and thus, less people voting for them.

Republicans wouldn't go for it because most of them are anti-birth control and free birth control is socialism

a flock of birds:His idea is that we would merge with the artificial intelligence, not that it would be some separate entity that we would then have to hope would be nice to us.

His idea is a gibbering, incoherent, mass of futile optimism.

Moore's law is not unlimited. The clock speed race has largely died. Now it's all going multicore, but keeping an increasing number of cores coherent is more sharply limited than clock cycles. After that, I would expect the next step to be specified-use processing units, like cryptographic coprocessors or something.

And that's pretty much a dead end after that.

/Quantum processors will be in there somewhere//But they only help with certain applications, and in most cases will not be useful.

Androtheism: the belief that man is God. Originated in the late 20th century by the so-called me-generation, an unusually populous age group resulting from a post-war baby boom. Androtheists take the idea that the world revolves around them as a literal belief. To the androtheist, original sin is found in any activity carried out by a human being that exploits the environmentin order to aid that human's survival. This can only be attoned by engaging in the ritual of activism which can range from acts of trespass and petty vandalism to the expression of emotionally charged debating fallacies on open discussion forums.

I'm afraid that this is not acceptable people need to die eventually to make way for new people.Im getting near the halfway point of my life and Im glad to see myself and my kids getting older. We need that I assure you that eventually around 160 years or so a person would go absolutely mad.

THE GREAT NAME:Androtheism: the belief that man is God. Originated in the late 20th century by the so-called me-generation, an unusually populous age group resulting from a post-war baby boom. Androtheists take the idea that the world revolves around them as a literal belief. To the androtheist, original sin is found in any activity carried out by a human being that exploits the environmentin order to aid that human's survival. This can only be attoned by engaging in the ritual of activism which can range from acts of trespass and petty vandalism to the expression of emotionally charged debating fallacies on open discussion forums.

netgamer7k:Wasn't Ray Kurzweil the guy who said we'll be immortal by 2045?

2035 I think was when he expected Brain Uploading, but the immortality was more due to the fact that we'd be replacing body parts with cybernetics, and through a combination of genetic engineering, nanotechnology repairing biological parts, and transferring our brain into artificial ones (more or less).

a flock of birds:His idea is that we would merge with the artificial intelligence, not that it would be some separate entity that we would then have to hope would be nice to us.

For all intents and purposes they're be two species of human basically (not counting what people might do with genetic engineering and how defined you want to get with species);

You'd have proto-humans (basic humans as you know them, no genetic or cybernetic enhancements, these would be your luddites more or less, and would be disadvantaged too)

And you'd have the modified humans, neo-humans, whatever classification in the end, but they'd be enhanced genetically, probably have nanobots in them, enhanced with cybernetic technology, and directly integrated with advanced AI/Computers to give them an edge in all aspects of life.

Having the luddites wouldn't be entirely a bad thing, least you'd have base stock if something went horribly wrong... *shrugs*

One would hope at least, that faced with immortality most people would realize they have to conserve the earth for their own future. Conserving for the future of somoene youre never going to meet is I think an abstract concept many cant get past. In that alone it might work.